TRY to close your eyes and what do you see? You might say it’s dark and can’t see anything. But do you know that even when we close our eyelids, our brain and eyes are still working? That is the reason why we see splashed or swirling light when we close our eyes for a while. This phenomenon is known as a phosphene. Most of the time when you close your eyes you will see near-black colour but it’s not quite black. The name for this exact hue of black is known as Eigengrau. Eigengrau is described as the colour we see when we close our eyes due to the absence of light. The word is a German word that translated to “intrinsic grey’’ or “own grey”. Gustav Theodor Fechner was a German philosopher and physicist who popularize this term to refer to the colour we see when we close our eyes. While true black colour is represented with #000000, Eigengrau colour is #16161D.
